Tuesday, August 26, 2014

What a Mess!

Yesterday, I watched as a little boy threw up all over the floor of a waiting area. I don't mean just a little vomit. No, it looked like horror movie special effects worthy of an Emmy.......a chunky tsunami of epic proportion. Like everyone else who was around, I winced and moved as far away from the contaminated zone as possible.....each mother grabbing her children and pulling them close. As we all sat in uneasiness, the mother ran over to the poor child and started wiping his face off with her bare hands and grabbed some paper towels from the nearby bathroom and started trying to soak up the gastric spill with their insufficient absorbency while we all just stood back and grimaced.

Vomiting could possibly be the only scenario in which women don't just rush in to help their fellow mother. If the child had fallen, was lost, bleeding, or choking, there's no doubt that we'd all hurry to lend assistance, but when stomach contents start spewing out as from an oscillating lawn sprinkler, you're on your own, sister. It's just a sad fact. It's a lonely place....the shoes of the puking child's mother.

Today, while standing in a checkout line behind a young woman, I saw her baby do one of those simultaneous cough/sneeze/spit up things that babies do. Without even thinking about it, she just reached down and used her fingers to wipe off all of the resulting fluids oozing from the child's orifices.

It's your legal obligation. It's all spelled out in the fine print of those triplicate forms they give you when you leave the hospital with them.

I stood there in line thinking about us, mothers. We have no qualms about getting in there and helping our children....even when it involves bodily fluids. I've been spit up on, bled on, slobbered on, sweated on, vomited on, sneezed on, tee-teed on, and pooped on by my offspring and, on a daily basis, even voluntarily sink my nose into articles of clothing to see if I can detect any offensive odors and determine if they're clean or not. Who else would do that for you?? None of it bothers me.....but let anyone else on God's green earth come towards me with any of that and I'll vanish faster than Houdini.

Even though a little crude and silly, I think that's how God is with us. There we are......crying and stunned... standing in the middle of a big mess that has erupted from the ugliness inside of us and while everyone else winces and runs away, He comes in, wipes us clean, and takes care of us. The mess is still there and it's still repulsive, but He sees someone He loves very much standing in the middle of it and He refuses to leave us alone there.

You most likely won't find this analogy in any of the leather bound devotional books sitting on the shelves of your local Lifeway bookstore but it's the best I've got today. Sometimes, you just have to work with the material you're given.